Alfa's last message

Muhammad Alfaridzhi, or Alfa as he was better known, died on Monday night in an East Jakarta hospital's intensive care unit after a brain operation failed to save his life. A professional boxer, Alfa died after he was knocked out in the eighth round of a 10-round boxing match against Kongtawat Ora of Thailand last Friday. The 23 year old never regained consciousness.

Alfa is not the first professional Indonesian boxer to die in the ring recently. Three others, Akbar Maulana, Dipo Saloko and John Namtilu, went before him. Two others survived but only after undergoing brain surgery.

Unlike those who died before him, though, Alfa's death caused a stir not only in boxing circles in this country, but among the public at large as well -- not to mention the grief which Alfa's death caused his close friends and family.

How is this difference in the public's reaction to be explained? Boxing, like the gladiator matches of ancient Rome, is not only a sport -- if indeed pitching two people against each other to see who can best and quickest beat the other unconscious can still be called a sport -- it is also, and is perhaps first and foremost, show business. And Alfa had all the makings of a popular boxing star. He was personally well-liked, was fairly good-looking and had an aggressive boxing style with a string of knock-out victories to his credit.

It seems, though, that the day of Alfa's death was a bad day for the local boxing scene. There have been claims that Alfa had been out of form for some time and should not have been allowed to fight. "I saw from Alfaridzhi's last three fights that his physical fitness had been decreasing," said Mahadi Sinambela, a former state minister of youth affairs and sports. "He probably suffered from cumulative injuries in his final bout. Obviously, he couldn't take the hard punches."

Ferdiansyah, a Golkar Party legislator and member of House of Representatives Commission VI for religious affairs and human resources, expressed more or less the same opinion.

The Indonesian Boxing Commission (KTI) must make a medical check of a boxer's condition before he steps into the ring and after a bout. Furthermore, in the case of someone who has been knocked out, a certain period, usually four to six months, must elapse before the boxer is allowed back into the ring.

Could it be that in Alfa's case, and perhaps in others as well, these factors were ignored because the show must go on? Both the Indonesian Boxing Promoters Association (Gaprotin) and the Indonesian Boxing Commission plan to meet this weekend to investigate this latest boxing tragedy. Tapes will be studied to detect anything that could have gone wrong.

"We're not going to blame any particular party, but rather we want to ensure that it won't happen again," Gaprotin chairman Tourino Tidar said. But how does Gaprotin expect to do that?

For Alfa's family, the answer is clear. They are withdrawing from professional boxing and closing down the Anak Bandung boxing club "until KTI improves its rules".

Other people, though, have different answers. "I won't stop promoting (boxing) due to this accident," said boxing promoter Daniel Bahari. "Instead, it (this accident) will attract attention because Alfa was a hero to the people of Bandung. I will miss him. People may be disappointed with his death, but I am more disappointed because I was the promoter. I couldn't stop the fight."

So there is some hope that, at the very least, Alfa's death will lead to substantial improvements in the way boxing is managed and organized. If safety rules can be properly put in place and supervised in other sports -- automotive sports is a good example -- why not in boxing?

But that is only the minimum that Indonesia's sports officials can do. Elsewhere, in a growing number of countries in the civilized world boxing is banned. Perhaps, with the growing appreciation of the principle of human dignity, Indonesians too will eventually come to regard boxing in the same manner -- not as a sport but as a degrading contest between two people, staged for the benefit of a paying public.